Most of my portable electronic gear runs on AA batteries so instead of buying alkalines all the time I tend to rely on rechargeable NiMH cells.

NiMH batteries supposedly last a long time, don't suffer from the memory effect and can be recharged like a couple thousand times at least, or that's what it says on the box. But looking back, the actual performance seems to be a lot worse.

I have a few NiMH batteries 4 to 5 years old, they may have about a hundred cycles behind them at most but their capacity is now much less than what it used to be. I have a decent charger optimized for NiMH so I'm a bit disappointed. It's so bad that sometimes a freshly recharged pair of NiMH's will last just about 10 minutes in my camera or barely suffice to power up a flashlight.

All in all, I've become wary of relying on rechargeables. Very often a spare pack of alkalines has saved the day in the field when several pairs of freshly recharged NiMH cells just died within minutes.

Now I'm a bit at a loss. Maybe I should look for a better charger or maybe there are better brands out there and my NiMH batteries are just crap. But I would sure love to hear about your experience.